Chapter 10 Galerie Cho Chou
Galerie Cho Chou
BLIND ITEM
A beautiful new starlet was seen on the studio lot yesterday, on set with a certain budding young martial arts movie star.
But soon, said-same starlet was also seen canoodling a certain older Hollywood-bound romantic actor that no woman can resist. It was wit against brawn that day and this reporter is happy to report that the caveman was handily dispatched.
Civilization won and, from the looks of things, the seed of a new romance has been planted in fresh, moist soil. Time will tell.
At two-thirty on a Tuesday afternoon, Galerie Cho Chou was a quarter full of people pretending they had always cared about contemporary ink.
On a Tuesday afternoon!
The Cho Chou Salon of Contemporary Ink and Form had been Mr. Cho’s idea, Mr. Chou’s objection, and Natalie’s execution. This was the reward or the fallout, depending on whether you asked Mr. Cho or Mr. Chou.
But Natalie was miserable and could not care less.
Her phone buzzed on the desk nearby.
Oh, God, she thought darkly, just let it go.
She picked it up and, of course, it was more of Danny’s messages.
Danny Yeung: I’m going to sue the damn paper!
Danny Yeung: I didn’t lose! Jason wouldn’t let me fight!
Danny Yeung: How can they say such things about you?
She typed: Nobody knows.
Deleted it.
She typed: Nobody cares.
Deleted it.
She typed: Do you want some cheese with your whine?
Deleted it.
She put the phone down again.
A collector from Mid-Levels was nearby blocking the Qiao. Two women in black linen were arguing softly about whether monochrome work was “having a moment.” Someone had put a wine glass on a plinth, and Mr. Chou was staring at it as if it were a grenade.
Mr. Cho found Natalie near the Zhu Jia series. He was sweating through his collar with the stunned happiness of a man whose funeral had accidentally turned into a birthday party.
“Natalie,” he whispered. “People.”
“I see them,” she replied listlessly.
“Buying people?”
“Looking people. Maybe buying people if you stop frightening them.”
Mr. Cho nodded solemnly and backed away, chastened.
Natalie immediately regretted saying that. It wasn’t Mr. Cho’s fault that Danny was making her miserable.
Natalie looked around. She should be happy. She wanted to share the gallery’s success with Danny.
But he didn’t understand.
He didn’t want to understand.
All Danny could think about, all he could text about, the thing that sucked the air out of the room was what had happened at the commissary.
And nothing had happened, thought Natalie.
She had already convinced herself of that. She had been sitting in the commissary, she and Aaron had a nice conversation, she had leaned over to take some selfies with him and that was it.
It was nothing.
Danny was delusional.
Danny was being irrational.
Flipping out over a blind item that everyone else had forgotten in a day.
Flipping out about nothing.
The gallery door opened.
Natalie looked up.
Aaron Lam stood just inside the door.
Pale jacket, dark hair, easy stillness, as if the entire crowded gallery had been waiting for his arrival without knowing it.
Aaron’s gaze moved once over the crowd, found her, and he walked over.
“Well,” he said casually. “Here you are.”
“Hello,” Natalie replied sullenly.
“Natalie,” he asked quietly, “may I see the show?”
She shook off her bad mood. “Of course. I’m sorry for being impolite.”
Aaron nodded. “No matter.”
“This way,” she said.
She led him first to the Qiao panels: three tall works in black ink and mineral wash, hung with enough space between them that the white wall became part of the piece.
From a distance, they looked like mountains after rain.
Up close, they fell apart into dry-brush scars, feathered edges, and gray blooms where water had dragged pigment across the paper.
Aaron stood in front of them for a minute or so.
Natalie looked at him curiously.
“Typhoon work?” he asked finally.
“Yes.”
Another minute passed.
He turned back to her.
“Natalie, what do you think of it?”
“I think it’s almost great,” she said. “The spacing works. The restraint works. But the damage is too tasteful. Qiao wants aftermath without mess.”
Aaron nodded slowly. “I agree about the tastefulness. Not about the mess.”
She looked at him.
“If he let the storm take over, it would become melodrama. The control is what lets us keep looking.”
Natalie looked at the panels again.
“No, Aaron,” she said. “The melodrama is the point. After a typhoon, things are ugly. Wet. Broken. Qiao sanitizes the scene to comfort the viewer, not challenge them. It’s why Qiao never broke out.”
Aaron stepped closer. “Then what about this green line?”
“A flourish.”
“And these brown strokes here, here, and here?”
Natalie stepped closer.
“Still flourishes?” he asked.
She frowned.
“Is it possible Qiao is using them to define the melodrama instead of avoiding it?”
Natalie kept looking.
“I never thought of that.”
“I’m not saying I’m right,” Aaron said. “But could I be right?”
She looked at him and smiled. “I’m not admitting that yet. But you’ve impressed me. You know your art.”
Aaron looked back at her. “Natalie, we both do.”
She carried that with her as she led him to the next piece.
She led him to the Zhu Jia works.
Five smaller pieces hung in a row, each built around a woman turned away from the viewer. No faces. Only shoulders, necks, backs, hands half-visible at the edge of the frame.
Aaron stopped in front of the middle one.
“This one,” he said.
Natalie waited.
“She wants to turn around.”
“No,” Natalie said. “She wants someone to notice that she hasn’t.”
Aaron looked at her.
Natalie looked back at the painting.
“She’s not shy,” she said. “She’s angry. Everyone thinks restraint is modesty. Sometimes it’s a test.”
Aaron was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “I failed that test.”
Natalie turned to him.
“When I came here before,” he said. “I looked at the work. I did not look at the person showing it to me.”
“You were a customer.”
“I was careless.”
She said nothing.
Aaron’s voice stayed low. “I thought because you were quiet, there was nothing you wanted from me.”
Natalie looked at him.
“That was my mistake,” he said. “Quiet people still want things.”
She looked back at the painting.
“And get angry when they don’t get them,” she said.
“Of course.”
She looked at him again.
He understands.
Natalie led him to the last piece, a small ink painting hung alone on the short wall.
It was almost empty: one dark curve, one pale wash, one red seal low in the corner. Most visitors passed it without stopping.
Aaron stopped.
“This one is about desire,” he said.
Natalie looked at him.
“Is it?”
“Yes. But not pursuit.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Pursuit only needs one person.”
He looked at the painting a moment longer.
“Desire needs two.”
Natalie did not answer.
Aaron turned to her.
“I came here because I wanted to see you,” he said. “But that is only half the matter.”
Her breath caught.
“The other half is yours.”
Natalie looked at him for a long moment.
Then Aaron looked past her, toward the door to the back room.
“Where is the really good art?” he asked.
There it was, Natalie thought. The door again. Say this is all, or take him to the back room.
Natalie looked at him.
She took a deep breath, then said:
“We keep the best art in the back. Only serious collectors can appreciate and are ready to engage with it.”
Aaron nodded.
She led. He followed.
In the back room, Natalie locked the door.
Aaron stopped beside the wrapped canvases.
The same ugly green sofa was still there with one cushion sagging and a strip of packing tape clung to the arm.
Natalie walked across and turned around in front of the sofa.
With trembling fingers, she reached up, slipped off the straps of her dress and the dress whispered to the floor. She unhooked her bra and tossed it to the side. She slipped off her panties and tossed them away.
Aaron’s dark eyes softened with desire. He looked at her tits and her pussy.
Then he undressed with graceful ease, revealing a thin but athletic torso, strong shoulders, and the elegant lines of a man who had spent years embodying romantic ideals on screen. His cock stood proud—long, smooth, and beautifully formed. Natalie’s mouth went dry at the sight.
The backroom was quiet except for their breathing. She looked at Aaron. He looked back at her.
She walked over to the small table against the wall, the one stacked with old catalogs. She bent forward over it. Her breasts pressed against the wood. She arched her back, stood on her toes and lifted her butt toward him. Her pussy, nestled between her legs, was wet.
Aaron stepped behind her. He put his hands on her hips.
“Natalie,” he said, voice low and warm like in that TV drama she had watched a hundred times. “Other people fuck but we make art.”
Natalie went to say something but he shushed her. “Natalie,” he said, “you don’t need to instruct me like other men. Love is my art form.”
Aaron’s cock entered her pussy.
Oh, my God, Natalie thought to herself as her body began to shiver, he knows the perfect angle.
“Anh… anh… anh… anh…”
Each thrust, Natalie let out a labored breath. He guided her back a half-step, then another half-step so she was holding onto the table with her hands, the side of her face was smushed against the tabletop and her back had a deep arch in it thrusting her butt and pussy higher in the air.
The angle of her body was masterful.
Aaron’s cock slid along the inside of her pussy with each thrust sending cold shivers through her entire body, her tits wiggling uncontrollably, making her legs shake, making her mouth exhale spontaneously.
The table shook violently with each thrust.
“Oh, my God,” she exhaled. “Aaron, Aaron, Aaron… nobody’s ever fucked me like this before.”
He fucked her deep, rhythmically and thoroughly.
Natalie’s body was shaking uncontrollably. Her nerve endings felt electrified.
Between breaths, she called out, “Aaron… Aaron… Aaron… you’re going to make me cum!”
His voice was smooth. “No, Natalie, you won’t cum yet.”
And, somehow, he did it.
He bent her body and showed her a whole new, higher level of fucking.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
Her pussy felt electrified. Every nerve ending was firing.
“My pussy,” she breathed. “What are you doing to my pussy?”
It was like her pussy was orgasming but it was orgasming in rhythm with his thrusts. She was grunting, shrieking, crying, laughing with each thrust. Her dopamine levels were spiking and peaking, her heart was racing, her breath was rapid and shallow.
“You’re… fucking… the… shit… out… of… me.”
Her pussy wanted to cum but, somehow, Aaron’s cock was preventing that. Her pussy was screaming at her, “Let me cum, I need to cum.” But it just couldn’t. The need to cum just built and built and built and built and built…
It was excruciating.
She felt lightheaded. Her hands were trembling uncontrollably, she had trouble keeping them on the table.
Her oxygen-starved brain wondered if she was going to lose consciousness. Maybe she’d faint with all the blood and heat rushing to her pussy.
This is crazy, Natalie thought weakly, he’s literally going to fuck me to death.
And then it happened.
Aaron had somehow collected all her cum energy into a single point in her pussy and then he detonated the orgasm like an atomic bomb.
A super orgasm racked her pussy.
Natalie wanted to scream but she didn’t have the energy. The sounds just came out of her mouth like a machine gun.
And it spread from there.
The orgasm refused to stay in her pussy. The orgasm expanded out and enveloped her whole body. Her entire body was shaking uncontrollably.
For 30 seconds, Natalie thought she was going to die.
I’m going to fucking die.
The out-of-control shivering and trembling eventually started to recede. Her pulse was thready. A layer of sweat covered her entire body.
Then, she felt Aaron lifting her in his arms, carrying her and setting her down on the sofa.
She opened her eyes and Aaron was right there, smiling at her, moving to the side a strand of her hair from her face.
She whispered: “You’ve… wrecked… me.”